Billingham Angling Club Case Study

"Clubmate is a professional quality product , I believe it is the way forward for clubs and will take the burden away from officials such as Membership Secretary, Secretary and Treasurer" Dave Munt, Chairman

KEY BENEFITS

Saved time on member admin, achieved financial control, improved data security, reduced stationery costs & safeguarded the long term future of the club

Billingham Angling Club - Case Study

Billingham Angling Club are a fishing club based in Billingham, Teeside. They’ve been around for approximately 100 years, their membership stands at around 200 adult members and they offer some great fishing across 5 different waters.

And like many other angling clubs up and down the country, they go beyond just fishing. Spearheaded by Chairman Dave Munt, they work tirelessly to help the wellbeing of their local community through the benefits of Angling.

And it hasn’t gone unnoticed. They’ve received countless awards for their efforts – including Care for your Area 1st prize, May Woolley (Northumberland in Bloom) Gold Medal award for best community project, The Mayoral Health And Well being award, Stockton Borough Council Community spaces award – the list goes on.

They’ve also received some impressive visitors – Jack Charlton re-opened their aptly named Charltons Pond back in 2004 & through their peer mentoring program they’ve even been interacting HRH Prince Charles.

CLUB NAME

Billingham Angling Club

CLUB MEMBERS

Approx 200

CLUB WATERS

Five

MAIN CONTACT

Dave Munt, Chairman

KEY CHALLENGES

Time consuming member admin

Late or missed membership payments

Unable to securely share real-time member data with other Club officials

Lack of financial transparency

Risk of data entry errors

Cost of printing & stationery

Over reliance on individual volunteers good will

No contingency plan if key committee members are unable to continue with their role

The Challenge

But whilst their efforts in the community are extraordinary, they are still susceptible to all the typical every day challenges that running a member based fishing club brings.

Up until now, BAC have been managing their memberships manually through a mix of spreadsheets, paper based forms, cheques, cash and snail mail.

It’s a very manual process and takes up a lot of their volunteers time.

It can often take weeks for new memberships & renewals to be processed. And even then, not all forms are completed accurately or even legible to read, so it goes back to the member and delays the process even further.

Keeping on top of club income can be tricky too. Receiving ad-hoc cash & cheque payments is difficult to keep track of and chasing renewal subs is not fun for anyone.

And all of this is managed by a single shared spreadsheet across multiple committee members. Tracking who has updated what, which is the latest version and & wider concerns around data security & GDPR make operating via spreadsheet a recipe for disaster.

So when Dave found out about Clubmate and heard of both the immediate and long term benefits it would bring to the club, he had no hesitation in signing up.

I had no doubts about signing up with Clubmate. I felt it was an opportunity to move the club forward

Dave Munt, Chairman - Billingham Angling Club

The Solution

Now BAC are using Clubmate, they are able to centralise & manage all of their member data securely from one location. Approved committee members can access the database, review up to date financial reporting and get a real time view of whats going on at the club 24 hours a day.

“The transparency of being able to track our finances, which can be accessed by all club officials has been a huge help” says Dave.

They can also seamlessly keep in touch with members via text or email, ensuring everyone at the club is kept up to date with regular communication.

Being able to offer an online portal so that members could access their own details online, update them and make a payment by debit or credit card at their own convenience was also very important.

Dave explains “We needed a system that allows members to access their club membership information at anytime. We have a lot of members who work away & couldn’t make it down to the local tackle shop to pay their subs but they have no excuses now as they can renew & pay their annual subs from wherever they are!”

As with many clubs, BAC’s member base is a mix of age groups, some of which are not as comfortable going online when joining or renewing. This hasn’t proven an issue though as the club still continue to accept the old paper based method of renewals where they need to and just add them to Clubmate as they receive them.

Clubmate has been designed to be simple to use and inclusive for all demographics so it’s easy to record memberships manually too.

“For the members who would prefer not to go online we can still accept paper forms and add their details in Clubmate one by one but for many, the online option is far more convenient. This way the member does all the work for us and the money goes straight in to our bank account. It’s so much easier” adds Dave

The Result

It’s still relatively early days for Billingham Angling Club but Dave is confident they have made the right choice signing up for Clubmate. With dedicated user training, they’ve been able to get up to speed using Clubmate really quickly.

“Clubmate is a professional quality product , I believe it is the way forward for clubs and will take the burden away from officials such as Membership Secretary, Secretary and Treasurer. The online support and training is really very clear and if you have any issues, there is a question and answer facility. Plus support is on the end of a phone if there is an issue.”